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Rumtiden Idea Lab

Rumtiden Idea Lab

The workplace in itself is a platform designed as a platform creative thinking, re-thinking
the very infrastructure for coming up with new ideas. The space itself is quantised into 3 dimensional office pixels, each measuring 75 x 75 x 75 cm, so that everything easily and quickly can be re-built and remixed.

Metric Time

Rumtiden is organised following Mmetric time, a decimal-based system of timekeeping, dividing the day into 10 hours, each hour into 100 minutes, and each minute into 100 seconds. This system aims to simplify calculations and align time measurement with the metric system's base-10 structure. Despite its logical framework, metric time has not been widely adopted, primarily due to the entrenched use of the traditional 24-hour system, invented in Mesopotamia 4000 years ago.

Monkeys and Synthesizers

Monkeys + Synthesizers is a project where 6 different spieces of monkeys (and some others) were given different synthesizers.
Humans is the only species on earth that actually compose music. Most birds and some mammals make beautiful sounds, but primarily to scare others away -- or to get laid. The project explores if other primates can enjoy and also make music, can the potentially have musical talent? The result of the experiment was pretty clear; They don’t. They actually suck at making music.

Invisiball

InvisiBall is a new game concept for two persons. It’s a game played in a dark room, on a court with loudspeakers in the 4 corners, blindfolded or by blind people. The ball is represented by a tone, mimicking earthly gravity. If the racket, that plays a tone depending on it's position in height, hit the ball at the right pitch, depth and left/right-orientation, it will fly back to the other player. The referee is a musical robot voice that also keep track of the score - and the whole game is built around music that change with the score between the players. With some training the players can serve, return, smash or lob the "ball" - and even bounce it on the ground. As the ball is invisible the game has a 3d visual interface for the audience. The game serves a training tool for those who have to adapt to a life without eye sight, due to illness or accident - and for us who can see, better understanding the challenges and possibilities of training our hearing sense.
InvisiBall is invented, composed and designed by Håkan Lidbo, developed and programmed by Magnus Frenning and Jonatan Liljedahl - in collaboration with young blind swedes. Supported by PTS Innovation Prize.

Flexagon

Flexagon is a conceptual, shape shifting furniture and a home for 3 people.
6 tetrahedrons connected in all sides where the volume in each tetrahedron is divided into 4 compartments. The whole furniture can be wrapped around itself, inwards or ourwards in 4 orientations. 3 poeople can sit around the Flexagon., each facing 2 tetrahedrons where 2 hatches open and reveal 1 out of 4 functions in their common home. Flexagon and livnig with Flexagon represents an alternative to a clock. It twists clockwise inwards when there is a need to change its function. The project also challenges individual habits and privacy as the 3 people have to synchronize their habits, find an inner privacy. The project discuss how compact we possibly can live, considering both uture megacities and mars travels.

Fruit Synthesizers

Apple Synth needs an apple to make sounds. 4 knobs controls different modulation of a drone tone. A humidity sensor and a conductivity sensor read the freshness of the fruit. The fresher fruit, the more dynamic sound. The Pear Synth and the Orange Synth work the same way.
Hot Dog Synth needs 2 sausages to make sounds. 4 knobs controls different cross connected FM modulation units and conductivity sensors read the consistence of the meat. Nürnberger Rostbratwurst sounds different than Chorizo. All synths have built-in loudspeakers but are also are connected through a mixer. Several people can play together to create their own food-based improvised composition. The Fruit Synthesizers were finalists in the music Instrument Innovation Contest at Georgia Tech, Atlanta in 2018

Blind Bot App

Blind Bot is a tool to remote control a human. One person is the operates the controller, the other one the robot and is blindfolded. Send voice commandos with the controller buttons that your robot must follow. Create challenges to perform a simple task. Play against other controller+robot teams. To play Blind Bot the robot must trust the operator. Play on a flat surface without obstacles. Never play close to bumps, holes ot staircases.
Programming by Nicole Silfverling and Nasir Tedros, concept, sound and design by Håkan Lidbo.

Lost Bots

A group of 25 cute but not very smart robots. They can only drive forward so they depend on people to help them to steer in the right direction. Each robot is carrying a sign saying" Help, we're lost, please help us find our way". As an experiment, all 25 rovbots were released, first in Stockholm and then in Uppsala, asking for help to come to Voltfestivalen, depending on the goodness of people. After some minor accidents and casualties, 24 robots made it all the way to the festival.

Mathrix

A complex modular synthesizer and a strategic board game for 4 players. The music instrument consists of 3 separate synthesizers, programmed and controlled with 8 wooden blocks/player. The topic of the game is to take the opponents pieces but as there are 4 players, pacts and diplomacy becomes a part of the game.

Can aesthetic thinking and strategic thinking be one and the same thing? What happens if we design games, tools and musical instruments that are not for us humans as we are - but for the humans we might become.

Flatpack Office

With accelerating urbanisation, people are forced to live and work closer than ever before.
The average volume of the human body 0,062 m3, or expressed as a cube with the sides 0,4 m
The human total biomass. 434 000 000 000 kg with would be a cube with the sides of 7,5 km.
One flatpack office is only 1/3 of the volume of a human body 0,75 x 0,75 x 0,03 but folds out it’s a workspace for 2.
25 units takes up the space of 0,75 x 0,75 x 0,75 and makes a workspace for 50 human bodies (3,1 m3)
By Håkan Lidbo and Anne Skoug Obel.

Hearo

Hearo is world’s only Internet Of Sounds device. Instead of adding more and more connected, single-function, electronic devices into your home, the acoustic and musical properties of everyday objects become programmable digital controllers. Hearo connects to your smartphone where you assign any sound in your home to control digital actions of your choice using IFTTT programming. The system comes with a number of IFTTT setups that can be connected to any sound, but the more the Hearo users create and share their own setups, the more versatile Hearo becomes. This is a IoT system that opens for a new type of creativity, to explore the musical and acoustic qualities of the objects in our homes that we cherish.

VR DJ

VRDJ is for HTC Vive, Oculus Rift and mobiles. Both as a Unity project and for web VR. The player control 24 synchronized musical loops that can be layered, mixed and tweaked with a series of effects. Surrounded in 360° by loops and effects, using the controllers in all directions in a futuristic sphere, floating above a club crowd, the interaction becomes very physical, aiming to bring the physical and spatial experience to DJ-ing, just like playing a real instrument. The interaction with controllers and laser beams picking up the effects and tweaking with hand- and arm movements blurs the boarders between dancing and performing.

Tetra House

This house has only 3 sqm floor space, but the whole house can be flipped in 4 different directions. Then it becomes 4 rooms with 4 different functions. Optimizing space into12 sqm floor. The walls become furniture with different functions in different orientations. A table becomes a staircase, the floor becoms a bed. Re-imagine living space for future Mars travellers where there is no up or down. Reimagine straight angles, symmetry, challenging gravity on earth. Tetra House was exhibited at House of Sweden, Washington DC.
By Farzaneh Farkish and Håkan Lidbo.

The Robot With Built In Disabilities

AnA is robot with built in disabilites.She doesn’t move very well, she is visually impared, hearing impared, she easily get lost and she has autism. But unlike other robots she is very open about her disabilities. It’s not easy to be a robot and its good for us humans to be aware of this. To prevent possible future robot racism.
AnA builds a map of her environment, has face and speech recognition, built on a Kabuki robot platform, with IR sensors, Kinect, Odroid computer, programmed in ROS.
But most of all she is designed with a personality to make the people she meets feel empathy and insight of the struggles and difficulties it is to be a robot.
Programmed by Roger Aarenstrup and Dawid Wolski
Concept, physical design, sound and face interaction design by Hakan Lidbo

True Bots

True Bots is a band of 3 robots that perform music and make keynote presentations in a new way. A remix between keynote speech and pop-songs. They play songs about robots, human evolution and the challenges of our future co-existence. They have performed at events like The opening of the Göteborg Science Festival and the opening of the Swedish pavilion at World Expo in Dubai.
By Håkan Lidbo and Henrik Vestin.

Augmented Church Bells

A series of musical pieces, each composed as an augmentation of the bells from different churches in Stockholm. The sounds of a city change over time; we speak differently, we use different tools and vehicles, but the sounds that hasn't changed though centuries are the church bells. This is just a lab, aiming to explore the possibilities of permanently augmenting church bells with synchronised, amplified music.
By Håkan Lidbo.

The Corona Hat

Testing the Corona Hat, built from a set of spare car parking sensors, battery pack from a robot vacuum cleaner and a busted globe. Whenever someone is 1,5 mer or closer, the hat beeps. The closer other citizens get, the faster it beeps. Total budget: €20.
Testing the hat in Farsta Centrum, a suburb outside Stockholm Sweden where we had no lock down.
By Håkan Lidbo

AV Live

A live set where transients of different frequencies from the music controls the movement, direction and characters of lines and planes of the generative visuals. Performed at Reaktorhallen KTH Stockholm.
By Jaime Reyes and Håkan Lidbo

City Symphony

Engaging I've the citizens to become a musicians and the city to become the musical instrument.
Client: Norrköping City Development.
Organised and composed by Håkan Lidbo, assisted by Henrik Vestin.

Urban Planning For Kids

Build a city with the wooden blocks. Twist the cubes and they will transform into apartments, offices, shops or places for leisure. This is an interactive game where the citizens of your city can feel “normal, good or bad” depending how your build. A good city has a good balance. You need offices to generate money and you need need people living there, both singles and families. They need places to buy their food, places here they can meet and fun things to do after work or after school. When you explore different ways to build your city, things can start going bad or going well. Try to build a city for everyone. The installation consists of a box with a camera facing the semi transparent building surface, a projector in the ceiling and a series of wooden blocks with optical codes on the back side.
Client: Swedish Institute and House of Sweden, Washington DC
Invented and built by Max Bjorverud and Håkan Lidbo.

Smart Embark

Embarking an aircraft takes a long time. More than 20 min in average, but much depending on the type of aircraft. Even when embarking in sections. Free seating takes 15 min. With 120.000 flights/day worldwide, this means 50.000 hours lost every day. 17 million hours/year. In the waiting lounge all seats are arranged as a copy of the seats in the aircraft but in reverse order. First to embark are the window seats in the last row. Then filling up in reversed order. Business and first class embark last. No one needs to stand in line, no passenger block any other passengers. There will be time to stow overhead baggage as everyone is arriving first to their row. This means less stress, better overview for the ground staff and at the aircraft. If means more comfort for the passengers and makes flying more efficient.
Concept by Håkan Lidbo, visualisations by Farzaneh Farkish.

Re:sense

This project is a series of wearables that block out one sense and replace it with a non-human super-sense. Some sort of super hero costumes that gives the wearer an experience what it's like to have a new sense.
1 "Vibrasense" is a helmet that blocks the wearers eye sight, but instead the helmet has ultrasonic distance sensors pointing in all directions, connected to corresponding vibration motors inside the helmet. This gives the wearer 360° vision - with vibration. The glove also has a distance sensor in the palm, connected to a vibration motor on the inside.
2 "Telesonic" blocks the wearers ability to communicate with people nearby, but with a built in super directional parabolic microphone connected to built in headphones - and a built-in microphone connected to a super directional loudspeaker in the palm of the glove, this super hero can communicate with people very far away.
By Håkan Lidbo, Magnus Frenning and Simone Giertz.

Light Pong

The project was first presented at the exhibition "Play The Light" at Technopolis Science Center in Mechelen Belgium and later File Festival Sao Paulo Brazil, BAM Festival in Brooklyn US etc.
By Max Björverud, David Åhrström and Håkan Lidbo.

Extracting Music from Groceries

Composing music with barcodes where the numbers in the code control melody, rhythm and sound. Making shopping far more creative. Barcode scanner, raspberry pi, battery pack, pure data, euclidean rhythms sound synthesis and notes based on each individual barcode builds loops of various lengths.

Increasing safety in public spaces with interactive art

An alternative to traditional summer street performances was needed when the covid-19 pandemic prevents us from meeting at public spaces. The art pieces all have the purpose of decreasing the citizens feeling of insecurity or anonymity.
Client: Stockholm Urban Development
By Håkan Lidbo, max Björverud and Jaime Reyes.